Recent reviews by ibofobi

Holy Interruptus, Batman!

tl;dr: Wait for many, many more patches.

First, the good things: Building and balancing an economy, while not destabilizing your country too fast, and deciding which countries you can trade with to do so, is pretty fun and engaging. So is trying to make your country a better place for everyone, without getting screwed by conservative interest groups.

*BUT* the diplomatic plays, all the war-systems and everything to do with those things are all absolute, burning piles of hot ****.

You'll force-capitulate wars for no good reason, before your country is any real danger, and while you still have plenty of chance to come back.

Random great powers will interfere in local affairs for absolutely no reason, and often against their own interests (latest example is Austria interfering in south american wars, *against* the only country they have any relationship or trade routes with, for a completely useless "obligation").

The hands-off war-system is an interesting idea, and could likely work if it wasn't buggy, half-assed and full of weird, stupid holes (Austrian soldiers teleporting to south american frontlines, past a brazilian fleet, is just on example or weirdness, google "victoria 3 front lines" for even worse.)

Having to go to war through a diplomatic play with a client state to annex them is pure insanity, that's absolutely not how that should work, especially since you can't do it while they're happy with you :head-banging-desk:

Unbalanced garbage, servers overloaded so you die to absurd jank, on top of the absurd unbalanced ♥♥♥♥ that is playerseeking missiles, literally every mob death causing bad ground-effects, and uncountable other ♥♥♥♥.

Pretty okay after 6 years of patches.

10027. Seagulls. Do not make a game.

Core gameplay loop (preparing for and fighting wars) is opaque, repetitive and boring. Do not buy.

After a whole game more I would like to elaborate: This is absolute burning ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ trash of the worst kind.

The front-line battle-planning AI is pretty much required, because you have to use it to get a massive 30% bonus to all combat, the only problem is it is completely insane, it will constantly shuffly your troops around at the slightest provocation, picking the troops the furthest away from a point to reinforce. This may make sense in small frontlines, but if you're trying to have fun invading Russia as Germany or opposite, it will just screw you.

The air-game is a constant whack-a-mole where the AI will strat-bomb where you don't put your defence, and since defending Belgium won't defend Germany from planes flying *THROUGH* Beligium, you might as well give the ♥♥♥♥ up on air as Germany, at least until you can out-produce the losses of throwing all into England.

The naval-game is boring leaning on not existing at all, except for naval invasions where you have to have naval and air supremacy in regions (makes sense), including areas that are 100% friendly because the only Allies left are in north america, and they might pose a threat to your row boats from Færøerne to Iceland.

tl;dr: The AI is horrible, the mechanics are boring, nothing makes sense and the UI won't tell you ♥♥♥♥ you need to know.

Never, ever, ever buy this game.

Best RPG ever in my humble opinion.

Too many core gameplay features are broken, too many other core gameplay features are gated behind insane numbers of DLCs, Paradox has to stop being super greedy. Too expensive. Too broken. Don't buy unless you like to heat your mansion by burning money.

Still the same problems. Now also with added bugs everywhere.

Base game is full of "community" goals, missions and all-round UI-hints that only work if you shell out for the Horizons expansion. That is ****** ****-****.

Early-game is fun. Mid-game and late-game are quite micro-intensive. Probably too expensive to buy into now, with all the DLCs.